husk. Burned wheat and husked barley were found in another. It seems clear that on these platforms, arranged in regimented rows, all overlooked by the frowning walls of the citadel, labourers had wielded long wooden pestles, pounding the grain in mortars. A similar system is used in Kashmir today, but the sinister significance of the Harappa platforms was the evidence they provided of supervised and regimented labour.

About a hundred yards to the north of these platforms was a system of granaries, each 50 feet by 20 feet, also arranged symmetrically in rows, with a passage between them. The floor of each granary was supported clear of the ground by low walls, to allow the circulation of air. There were small projecting air vents, and the total floor space of all the granaries was over 9,000 square feet.

Somewhat later, archaeologists began to investigate the great mounds of Mohenjo-daro, nearly five hundred miles to the South-west in the Sind Province. Here there were few overlying modern buildings, save for a Buddhist stupa which rose above the highest mound.

When, after thousands of tons of earth had been removed, and the tangle of foundations, pavements and mighty walls stood naked to the sun, the least imaginative visitor was stirred to wonder. Throughout the world archaeologists recognized the discovery as a new landmark in prehistoric research; a new road had opened into the remote past of mankind. For here was a great city almost, if not as old, as the Pyramids or Ur of the Chaldees. The Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates could no longer be regarded as the only begetters of the earliest riverine cultures. The Indus, now, could take her place beside them.

It soon became clear that Mohenjo-daro was a product of the same civilization which had created Harappa. Like that city, it consisted of two main elements, a powerful walled citadel to the east and a lower city to the west. The citadel was built on a platform of mud-bricks and mud, resting on an artificial mound. There were remains of defensive bastions at the south-east corner; two of them apparently guarded a postern gate, but at a later stage in the city's development this gate had been blocked and replaced by a platform, which had collapsed. Among its debris the excavators found "about a hundred baked-clay missiles, each approximately six ounces in weight".

Within the citadel the diggers came upon a huge bath or tank, 39 feet long, 23 feet broad and sunk eight feet below the level of the courtyard, which was surrounded by a corridor separated from the courtyard by ranges of brick piers. Flights of steps led down into the bath, which had been rendered water-tight; the floor was of bricks set on edge with gypsum mortar between, and the walls were treated in the same way. The outlet from the bath led through